Five Stars for “IN IT TO WIN IT!” - New Business Brings Healthy Meals to Your Door
Dana Winowiecki is a personal trainer, nutrition coach, chef and, now, owner of her dream business, In It To Win It, preparing fresh, healthy meals with ingredients from local farms. All meals are homemade, packaged fresh and have no additives or preservatives.
They taste better than great; Five Stars for sure.
Dana’s website includes her beautifully prepared meals and even an Apple Cinnamon Protein Overnight Oats offering that will send you scrambling for a spoon.
Among the current dinner options are Korean Ground Beef and Tumeric Rice Bowls, Summer Peach Salad with Chicken and Balsamic Maple Dressing and an Enchilada Turkey Meatloaf with Cilantro Lime Rice and Quick Pickled Jalapenos. There’s even Kids’ Turkey Carrot Meatballs that will hook children on all things good without knowing it. Meals change frequently with the timing of fruit and vegetable harvests.
There are also lunch/light dinner options.
The price for these all-homemade meals: a stunning value at $12-$18 plus door delivery (free pick-up available, too.)
It's a ton of hands-on work but Dana is well versed and makes it look easy.
Her lifelong passion has been health and fitness. Nothing other than family makes her happier than preparing up to 400 fresh meals per week, each with an extra helping of TLC.
“I’m not afraid of hard work,” she says. “I was raised on a Leelanau County farm where work – hard work – was an expectation and not a request. I loved chores in the fields, the barn and outbuildings, or with the harvests. I grew up strong, playing basketball in the barn or gravel driveway, jumping over shrubs and bushes on the ‘back-forty,’ and practicing my hurdling and sprinting up and down the berry rows as part of my conditioning as a teen. Hard work was no option, it was a necessity.”
And when she stops at the family farm, as she often does with the kids, she still shoots driveway hoops with uncanny accuracy and the effortless grace of a sharpshooter.
A star athlete at Glen Lake school, Dana received a full-ride basketball scholarship to Central Michigan where she graduated with a major in Health Nutrition and Preventative Rehabilitation and a minor in Nutrition and Psychology. She has more than 15 years of experience in personal training and nutrition.
“We want to help you discover how great it can feel to eat healthy, well-balanced meals each day, knowing you are giving yourself and family the very best,” she said. “We eliminate the need to shop, cook, correctly portion and clean. All you need do is heat and eat. In two minutes, you can enjoy fresh gourmet meals with everything you need and nothing you don’t.”
Dana points out that the facts speak for themselves.
“We love to go one-on-one with commercially processed foods compared to our meals,” said the ever-competitive Winowiecki. “It’s not unusual for ours to have 200 percent or more protein and far less fat, carbohydrate grams, sodium and calories. And, besides, ours tastes better!”
Dana’s business received a big dose of help from Venture North Funding and Development, including a capital loan for her startup enterprise. Venture North is a nonprofit commercial lending organization with a social mission: using affordable financing, mini-grants and no-cost consulting to help lift up people and businesses to grow and prosper, with a big focus on underserved areas.
“In addition to mom, dad and my immediate family, Venture North had a crucial role in making my dream come true,” Dana says. “They helped me properly incorporate and develop a partnership with Goodwill’s Food Rescue program to prepare meals to incubate my business. Their communications specialist, Johanna Gross, was amazing - helping us craft a website to promote our products and accept orders. Their loan was a perfect fit with our capital needs, enabling us to get started while preserving family savings. I had no idea this sort of help was available.”
“From her business and marketing plan to her experience and well documented will to succeed, supporting Dana and In It to Win It was an easy decision,” said Venture North President Laura Galbraith. “The fact that she’s tied in with partners like MI Farm Coop and buying from local farms was icing on the cake. We’re with Dana for the longhaul and can’t wait to support her growth!”
Speaking of growth, Dana will soon ramp up a separate but closely related business segment to healthful meals – personal fitness tailored to the condition and objectives of each client, including boot camps, using her complete gym facilities or those of others.
She competes in body building and hits the gym at least five times weekly, doing jaw-dropping, super-human things like leg pressing 500 pounds.
“Our meals and personal fitness program are always tailored to the individual – I’m the coach but my customers are the captain, steering me based on their personal goals and dreams.”
“My passion is to help people lead a more healthy and satisfying life,” she says, “just like I’m doing with my startup business that I love.”
